Dear Miss Perkins
Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany was published by Kensington and distributed by Penguin Random House on January 21, 2025
Connor McLaren Photography
Praise for Dear Miss Perkins
“Graham is an ardent champion of her subject, sharing Perkins’s values and extolling her ‘diligence, empathy, integrity, and selflessness.’… Graham’s tight focus on Perkins’s struggles to help refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, despite American bigotry, casts a cold, fierce light on the Statue of Liberty’s promise of welcome to ‘your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’… A valuable exploration of one woman’s suborn crusade to save those who would have ended up in death camps.”
—Charlotte Gray, The Wall Street Journal
“A fascinating portrait of the progressive female trailblazer and U.S. Secretary for Labor who navigated the foreboding rise of Nazism in her battle to make America a safer place for refugees.”
—Sara Georgini, Smithsonian Magazine
“Graham’s extensive original research shines…Thought-provoking and long overdue… Perkins, as historian Rebecca Brenner Graham reveals in her illuminating new biography, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts To Aid Refugees From Nazi Germany, was a woman molded by her Protestant religiosity, work in settlement houses, and identity as a member of the Progressive movement. Thus, she tirelessly and creatively undertook to admit immigrants, even taking on her governmental colleagues in the U.S. State Department. There is a crucial lesson for our times in Perkins’s career: even within an uncaring government bureaucracy, one person could make a difference, not only in what she was able to accomplish but also in what she was able to thwart.”
—Adina M. Yoffie, Contingent Magazine
“Rebecca Brenner Graham’s work examines a lesser-known legacy of pathbreaking social justice crusader Frances Perkins: her farsighted, resourceful humanitarian effort to help Jews fleeing the Holocaust find refuge in America. She has crafted a compelling portrait of Secretary Perkins’s fearlessness and compassion in the face of misogyny and bigotry.”
—Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island
“Rebecca Brenner Graham’s Dear Miss Perkins is an excellent and long-overdue study of Frances Perkins’s compassionate and tireless efforts to aid Jewish refugees during one of history’s darkest times. Through meticulous research, Graham reveals the little-known battle Perkins fought behind the scenes in FDR’s administration, often at great personal cost. The detailed stories of individual refugees who sought her help — those she was able to save and those she couldn’t — are both moving and essential reading. This book is an invaluable resource for understanding Perkins’s legacy and would have been an indispensable aid in writing my own novel.”
—Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Madam Secretary and America’s First Daughter
“Dear Miss Perkins tells the little-known story of how Labor Secretary Frances Perkins fought xenophobia, antisemitism, and intra-cabinet rivalry to champion Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis. The story is little-told in part because Perkins wanted it that way; she downplayed her own efforts to contemporary journalists and later historians. But Rebecca Brenner Graham doesn’t let that stand in her way. With deft prose and impeccable research, Graham gives Perkins the history she deserved in this inspiring tale.”
—Rebecca Boggs Roberts, author of Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson
“Dear Miss Perkins offers a refreshing millennial perspective on the history of American immigration policy through the actions of Frances Perkins, one of the most under-appreciated women of the Roosevelt era. Meticulously researched and detailed, it goes far beyond Miss Perkins’s efforts to help Jewish refugees prior to the war. Dr. Graham paints a compelling portrait of a quiet hero who transcended the misogyny of her time, shattered glass ceilings, and rewrote the rules for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
—Paul Sparrow, former Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
“This insightful, incisive, singular new study of Frances Perkins’s effort to rescue European Jews in the late 1930s is timely. The antisemitism, xenophobia, and sexism Perkins confronted resonate, as America confronts new asylum seekers and another crisis of conscience. Graham’s engaging narrative is crisp, capturing characters and action with telling anecdotes and memorable descriptions. Both historians and history fans will enjoy this fast-paced, fact-packed page-turner.”
—Elisabeth Griffith, author of Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920–2020 and member of the Society of American Historians
“Finally, proper attention is being paid to Frances Perkins and her dogged efforts to aid European Jews during the Holocaust. Rebecca Brenner Graham’s expansive and modern telling reminds us that there are historical figures to whom we can—and should—look for inspiration as we continue to face some of the same xenophobic, racist, antisemitic dynamics as Perkins did in the 1930s. You’ll emerge from this book with a new hero.”
—Rebecca Erbelding, Holocaust historian and author of the National Jewish Book Award-winning Rescue Board